Military Camp 1918

John Singer Sargent created ‘Military Camp’ using watercolor paints. I’m imagining Sargent, outside in the field, rapidly capturing the light of the landscape around him. The pale lavender sky, the warm tones of the sandy ground and the ochre leaves in the trees. He’s seeing and responding, shifting and improvising. The thin washes of color, allowed to freely blend, create a sense of immediacy and transience, like a fleeting moment captured in time. Look at how the washes of brown and green define the undergrowth. It's a quick gesture which elegantly communicates a sense of depth and texture. You can almost feel the sunlight filtering through the leaves. Maybe Sargent felt an affinity with earlier landscape painters like Constable, but he was also part of a whole conversation about light and color that continued through the twentieth century. Painting is a form of embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty. It allows for multiple readings and a place for us to reflect on the world around us.